Successful Weekend at BUCS XC

Niamh Bridson Hubbard put in a true captain's performance leading from the front with a 13th place finish (35th 2018), followed by a pack of three sandwiching an Oxford runner (Emily Ruane, Nancy Scott and Phoebe Barker in 24th (61st 2018), 25th (78th 2018) and 27th respectively). The next Cambridge trio consisted of Rachel Longstaff in 35th (68th 2018), Fiona Bunn in 40th (135th) and Lizzy Apsley in 44th (58th 2018). Making the top 100 on her first go was Joni Wildman in 89th, with Becca Frake in 125th. One of the performances of the day was Lucy Thompson who finished 158th moving up from 231st in 2018! Two freshers in Emily Bradley (190th) and Eleanor Hammond (243rd) followed with Helen Ockenden moving up a whole lot from last year to finish 263rd after a 345th last year. Emese Ratkai finished well within the top half of the 650 field in 295th while Amelia Wainwright almost matched her 2018 run with a 400th place finish despite persistent injury problems in the last year.

Men's A Race (2nd, 2nd in 2018)

Throughout the race it felt as though Cambridge may have been pushed out of the top 3 by Oxford, but turned out Loughborough never really made it to the races (our scoring team making it home before their 3rd) and we pipped Oxford to second by a single position. Performance of the day was from Oliver Fox who picked up a well deserved medal finishing third moving up from 8th last year - from what I can tell the best Cambridge finish at BUCS since 2011, while Will Ryle-Hodges was the gift that kept on giving improving two places into 14th. Jeremy Dempsey had a brave race to take it on early on and was rewarded with 16th place, one of the highest fresher finishes at BUCS in recent years. Phillip Crout was the constant in our team finishing 19th again to close out the team. George Gathercole and Norman Shreeve beat their Oxford and Loughborough counterparts for 29th and 31st.

Men's B Race (3rd, 4th in 2018)

One of the true signs of progress from this team was our B team taking a medal. James Coxon overcame his fear of mud finishing 7th (21st 2018), Paul Aste overcame his fear of not doing loads of miles and tapered well and finish 12th (32nd 2018), Joe Massingham fought well to finish 16th despite a hard start and Paul Pruzina closed our third place team in 22nd (75th 2018). Members of 'the train' came through with Aidan Rigby (32nd), Jacob Brockmann (34th) and Jose Gray (71st, 123rd 2018) hurtling through. MacGregor Cox put in a selfless run to finish 35th, while Iain Davies improved by over 100 places from his last BUCS for 45th (149th 2017) and fellow Scot Pete Cameron was 52nd. Jamie Edgerton was one of the stars of the day mowing down the field in 61st on his first go, with Tom Goulding (81st, 98th 2018), Matt Harris (86th), Harry Cox (93rd), Rob Waddy (95th, 158th 2018) and Su-Min Lee (99th, 115th 2018) finishing off Cambridge's 16 in the top 100, compared to 13 last year. Tom Kearns finished 117th, Hamilton Allport didn't have to deal with a water jump this year and finished 179th (229th 2018) with George Roberts and Max Bloomfield making up the triathlon representation in 183rd and 197th. Freshers Rob Perry, Harry Kettle and Topy Speirs all easily made the top 200 finishing 150th, 165th and 180th (around 550 in total).